ESET NOD32 Antivirus 6 + Windows Defender in Windows 8

I'm using Windows 8 in a VM, and installed the latest ESET NOD32 Antivirus 6, licensed version.
I disabled Windows Defender during the installation, just to be safe.
The installation was finished, and the Antivirus is working as expected.
Now I tried to re-enable Windows Defender, but there is no option like there is in Windows 7 where I'm using ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5
In Action Center I see that ESET is handling Spyware now.
In Task Manager I cannot restart the WinDefend service.
Google leads me to believe it's supposed to be like this, never run 2 AV/A-Spyware programs.

What I am wondering now is ... if I had not disabled Windows Defender, would it have been disabled automatically?

Basically, when you install any 3rd party AV or security product, Windows Defender turns itself off automatically.

Click to expand...

Thanks to all for replying

Sounds logical, maybe I will revert the VM to a previous state to know for sure.
But why can I re-enable it in Windows 7 with ESET 5, and not in Windows 8 with ESET 6
Is it the OS or the AV version that makes the difference?

Staff Member

Under Windows 7, Defender acts only as an anti-malware product. But under 8, it acts as a fully featured av+anti-malware. As is not recommended to run two av's simultaneously, Windows doesn't allow you to do so.

Under Windows 7, Defender acts only as an anti-malware product. But under 8, it acts as a fully featured av+anti-malware. As is not recommended to run two av's simultaneously, Windows doesn't allow you to do so.